Recipes from Disaster - Part 1

circular holes cut in them - these held bowls with spoons attached on chains. The seating capacity was one hundred. The public would first join the queue outside, then one hundred at a time would be allowed into a corridor, where they waited until the bowls were refilled. When all was ready a bell rang, they filed in, sat down, drank their soup and left by the other door, picking up a hunk of bread as they left. The bowls were rinsed and filled, and the process was repeated. This was a form of mass production considered de-humanising by Sir John Burgoyne, later to become Raglan's Chief Engineer in the Crimea, and at the time Chairman of the Famine Relief Comission. But the overriding priority was to get food to a starving population and with Soyer's method the kitchen was able to average 8,750 servings a day - the most optimistic forecast had been 5,000.

In due course the kitchen was handed over to the South Dublin Relief Committee, and Alexis returned to the Reform Club. But he was becoming unhappy there; whether his sojourn in Dublin had unsettled him or whether it was just in the nature of the man not to hang around anywhere for too long, but from 1847 on, he threatened to resign on several occasions, each time being persuaded to stay until he finally did leave in 1850. The Coffee Room at the Club was to be thrown open to the public, a measure with which Alexis violently disagreed. He feared that such freedom of access could result in increasing the risk of contagious disease; he had an almost morbid fear of pulmonary consumption, as two of his brothers had died from its ravages.

At this time London was abuzz with anticipation of the 1851 Great Exhibition. Alexis had to find a means of replacing his £1000 a year salary, and conceived the idea of opening a restaurant near the Hyde Park site as a great business proposition. So together with friend and business partner Joseph Feeney, he acquired Gore House, handily situated on the site of the present Albert Hall, from the Countess of Blessington who had been living there. Alexis wanted something flamboyant and lavish, and they spent a small fortune in ripping out the interior and replacing it with dining rooms with plush expensive decor reflecting rather effete cultural and classical themes. In the grounds they

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